On November 19, 1895, U.S. Patent No. 549,952 on a paper pencil issued to Fredrick E. Blaisdell:

 Frederck Elijah Blaisdell was born in 1864 at Chicago, Illinois. Disinterested in his family’s newspaper business, he left his family in Chicago, and spent some time in Philadelphia, before ending up in London. He obtained a job as a clerk, and one night while working late and alone the only pencil he had split and broke the wood around the lead so that all he had was the lead itself. As he continued working, the lead kept breaking. He finally tore off a strip of newspaper and wrapped it spirally around the lead which kept the lead from continually breaking and allowed him to complete his work. As the point of the lead would wear down, he would untwist some more of the spirally wrapped paper until he had another point working.

This gave him his big idea for his greatest invention, the Blaisdell Pencil. He found financing and patented the idea, and Blaisdell pencils were manufactured and marked for decades.